


now you are here (again beside me)

by queenfanfiction



Series: nothing so rare or precious [5]
Category: Pundit RPF (US)
Genre: Multi, angst runs strong in my korean blood, comment!fic, this was not originally my fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:24:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/543961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenfanfiction/pseuds/queenfanfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, Keith always expected that he would die alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now you are here (again beside me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melliyna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Nothing Remains But The Cry](https://archiveofourown.org/works/542958) by [melliyna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melliyna/pseuds/melliyna). 



> Written in response to melliyna's fic "[Nothing Remains (But the Cry)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/542958)." It's supposed to make it all better! For a given value of better. Title from the Finale of Les Misérables. Original comment!fic posted [here](http://thosestoriesplus.dreamwidth.org/128628.html?thread=4381300#cmt4381300).

Keith is getting old. He can feel it in his bones, can see it in the whirlwind of new celebrity faces and their headlined scandals and that unholy hybrid monstrosity of a social network that was Tumblr eating Twitter before making love to Facebook, and can hear it in the crack of his nephew's voice that signifies a losing battle with puberty the last time his sister had them talk over Videophone.

He knows he's getting older, so he can't say it comes as much of a surprise when one morning the arthritic ache between his shoulderblades blossoms into something fiery and burns through his diaphragm before settling in a glowing-hot mass beneath his ribcage. Frankly, he manages to think through a hazy surge of pain, he's only surprised it hadn't come any sooner.

He coughs, experimentally. The world around him explodes in an agonizing fireball, gravity inverts itself, and for a while after that he knows nothing else but darkness.

The thing is—the thing is, Keith always expected that he would die alone. It's what he'd built for himself, after all, what he'd prepared himself for through all these years. Keith Olbermann, professional commentator, part-time pundit and full-time asshole. Countdown to Keith Olbermann's next meltdown. That ostentatious crazy ranting liberal nutjob Olbermann who was so famous for being difficult and antisocial and actually quite repulsive that they'd designed an entire fucking HBO show about him. (He might still be sore on that one. Not least because Jeff Daniels was by far better-looking and even managed to salvage some of his relationships before the end, which was a feat Keith could only envy.)

But here's the thing: never in his wildest dreams did Keith imagine he would wake up again in a hospital room, the bed too soft for his liking and the walls as bare antiseptic white as every hospital everywhere, much less in a hospital room full of people.

He blinks, but they don't go away like they usually do. There's his sister and her kids, of course, but there's also Melissa, Gene, Richard, Lawrence, Ezra and his wife, Chris holding little Ryan by the hand (she waves shyly at him in the unassuming way only nine-year-olds can, which nearly makes Keith's fragile heart break all over again), and standing at the head of them all is Rachel. Rachel, glorious Rachel, her hair as short as it was when there hadn't been a streak of gray to be seen, looking furious as hell were it not for the tears in her eyes.

"Whoa," Keith croaks once they've all had a chance to stare at him for an uncomfortably awkward period of time. "No one told me—I don't think my contract said I'd die with an audience."

Rachel's nose flares, a dangerous gesture that Keith recognizes even after so long. "You," she goes, then has to stop to wipe at her face angrily. "You—you're not allowed to die. Got it? Not now, not—at least not until I've made you godfather."

"Sorry, what," Keith says, and then his eyes drift down to where Rachel's arms are crossed protectively, just below her bosom and right above her—

Huh. Well. It certainly showed how much Keith had buried himself inside his empty protective shell, that he had failed to notice or hear that Rachel Maddow was fucking _pregnant._

"So who's the lucky sperm daddy?" he asks after a pregnant ( _HA!_ says the ghost of Chris Matthews) pause, which elicits muffled laughter from the others. A hand shoots up from the crowd, followed by a grinning-and-much-shorter-than-anyone-else Richard Engel dragging a blushing Anderson Cooper to stand at the front by Rachel's side.

And then they're all crowding around him and talking loudly and laughing as if this wasn't Keith's deathbed they were surrounding, and one of his gnarled hands is in Rachel's smooth ones while the other is resting on her swelling abdomen under the warm weight of Richard's and Anderson's holding it in place, and maybe, just maybe, Keith thinks—maybe there is a way to make up for lost time, after all.


End file.
